Words to Live With

Marilyn McEntyre is a steward of words. She has taught courses on English and medical humanities, and she has written or edited over twenty books, including Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies. Marilyn joins Elise to discuss the meaning of four words: dwelling, compassion, truth, and awe. Marilyn discusses why she loves participles and how "Christianese" can constrict the meaning of a word. She also reads three of her own poems and explains the background and inspiration of each.   Words as building materials   How space shapes us   Particularity and universality   A productive relationship between loneliness and dwelling   Touch deprivation   The strength and resilience of compassion   Christianese   Our relationship to Industrial food system   A broader examination of conscience   Truth as embodied and relational   The act of translation   Convicted civility   Why do we lie?   Relationship between death and awe   Accompanying the dying   Links: Dwelling in the Text by Marilyn McEntyre Word Tastings: An Essay Anthology by Marilyn McEntyre Teaching Literature and Medicine by Marilyn McEntyre The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies by Marilyn McEntyre The Overstory by Richard Powers The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from A Secret World by Peter Wohlleben Should Trees Have Standing?: Law, Morality, and the Environment by Christopher D. Stone I MARRY YOU: A Sheaf of Love Poems by John Ciardi Speaking Peace in a Climate of Conflict by Marilyn McEntyre Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky